Editorial: Salute our veterans!

Today is Veterans Day, and we join all Americans in thanking them for their service to our country.

We know it sounds trite, but they have helped us remain free, especially those who have served in times of war.

To show how serious we are about honoring veterans, we embarked a year ago on a project to profile World War II veterans. We have run these every Monday for a year and have decided to continue this for rest of the year because the response to these veterans has been so positive.

We're not the only ones to celebrate the stories of these veterans.

Today, the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum is holding a party today to honor all the WWII vets we have written about over the last 12 months.

That is wonderful. What a nice way to cap off the year for these veterans.

Even losers are winners

The elections are over, but before we kiss them goodbye, we want to acknowledge those who ran and came up short on Election Day.

Running for public office requires candidates put themselves before the public for detailed scrutiny. They know they run the risk of being called all sorts of names, including some that would make their mothers cringe.

And in the end, half of those in contested elections get to go home.

Some of those who lost, like Dr. Tim Chiu and Ken Bryan, came out as big winners because the more the public got to know them, the better their intellect and character shined through.

They weren't alone. Everyone who ran brought good things to the table. We don't want to name them all because we don't want to forget anyone.

But we do want to thank every candidate for your desire to serve and for putting yourself before the voters. It's hard work and we thank you for embracing the challenge. Good luck to you all.

Election night analysis

Enough of that gooey nice stuff. Here's what some of TV's talking heads had to say about the elections:

"You know what GOP stands for? Going Out of Power." -- Jay Leno

"It's ironic because Republicans always wanted to appeal to minorities. Now they are one." -- Jay Leno

"Big, big win for the Democrats. Senator Hillary Clinton's overwhelming victory has fueled speculation that she will run for president in 2008. In other words, there was some good news for Republicans." -- Conan O'Brien

"The new Speaker of the House is Nancy Pelosi. She had lunch today with President Bush, but the lunch honestly did not go well. She would not pass him anything he asked for." -- David Letterman